Tag: seville

There are two Spains; the Spain you find if you go there, recognisably European and not wildly different from France or Italy, and the overheated, exotic Spain of vintage tourist posters that has existed in the British imagination since the days of the revenge tragedy. Andalucia has a fairly strong and separate identity, as so many of Spain’s composite regions do, but it fills in for the rest of Spain, which we tend to think of as all flamenco, bullfights and tapas. Historically, this presumably comes from our connections to the area via the rock of Gibraltar and the sherry trade. Built on a Moorish template, with its whitewashed buildings, its orange trees and the ghosts of its former selves (Roman, Islamic and Jewish), Seville fits the mythical Spain like a glove. There seems to be a perfume in the air, and an intoxicating one. It is perhaps telling that the two most iconic Sevillanos, Carmen and Don Juan, are fictional characters. Seville’s historic parts are well preserved and the city fitted the image I always had of the Naples of the Grand Tour, before it became a concrete developers’ free-for-all. The simple fact that every square and boulevard is lined with orange trees seems to stand for the city as a sort of pleasuredome.